When a Utah police chief was gunned down in 2001, state prosecutors went after the gunman. But federal investigators set their sights on a convicted felon who had provided the gunman with the rifle used to kill the chief. This led reporter Robert Gehrke to launch a thorough investigation of federal gun prosecutions under U.S. Attorney Paul Warner which jumpted from 33 in 1999, his first year in office, to 362 by 2003. At its peak, Gehrke found, gun cases made up more than a third of all federal crminal cases in the state, a proportion that was three times the national rate. Once agin TRAC data was an important aspect of the Tribune's investigation.